BEAUMONT — The cartoon image of a symphony conductor is of a squat, middle-aged man with an unpronounceable name and the personality of a rattlesnake.
He terrorizes his musicians and disdains his audience.

But the maestra of Beaumont's Symphony of Southeast Texas is tall, slender. 30-something, California native Diane M. Wittry, who is known for her ready laugh and her ability to charm an audience into loving classical music as much as she does. She's a pioneer of sorts. Only about 15 symphonies in the nation have female conductors. Kate Tamarkin in Tyler is the only other one in Texas.

"I have seen 1,800 students from the first to the fifth grades sit mesmerized as she talked to them," said Jimmy Simmons, Dean of Fine Arts and Communications at Lamar University, "and anyone who has tried to give educational programs for children knows how hard that is to do."

At the same time, she can be a stern taskmaster. Simmons is Wittry's boss at her job as a lecturer and adjunct professor at Lamar. Like every other member of the university's music facility, he also plays in her symphony.

"When I perform in the symphony," he said, "I make absolutely sure I'm prepared." Nothing, he says, gets by Wittry's demanding ear.

"That's my job," Wittry said, "to get the best out of the musicians. I want them to play better than they are able to play. I want them to sound better together than they would each sound separately."

Another, perhaps bigger part of her job is to convince Southeast Texans that classical music can be fun. Although the area may be more known for producing musicians like Janis Joplin, George Jones and Mark Chestnut, classical music also is thriving.

"We're hoping to have every concert sold out this season," Wittry said. She's also proud to add that her symphony is one of the few in the country that operates in the black. With an annual budget of $310,000. Beaumont's symphony is one of the smallest of the 240 major symphonies in the country, Wittry said. "That's not a big budget, compared to 14 million for Houston, she said.

Beaumont symphony musicians who come from Houston, Lake Charles, La., and all over East Texas, tend to play out of a love for music more than the money they are paid, she said. Volunteers help with things like mailings.

"Being small probably gives us more freedom." she said. She can, within reason and within the constraint of budget, adopt any program she likes. She tends to favor new composers and "big, romantic pieces."

Her first concert in Beaumont was in February 1991, when Wittry was one of five guest conductors leading the Beaumont Symphony. Each was also auditioning for the job of replacing retiring conductor Joseph Carlucci, who had led the symphony for 19 years.

"There aren't many conducting jobs." Wittry said. "There are hundreds — thousands — of people out there to apply for every job."

When she heard of the opening in Beaumont, she applied, but didn't consider her chances very great. "I applied for everything." she said. "It was a way of letting people know I was still alive."

More than 300 would-be conductors applied for the job in Beaumont. She said she was amazed to be picked as a finalist.

"I didn't even know where Beaumont was", she admitted. The only place she'd been in Texas was the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. "I got out a map and found Beaumont," she said. "I was relieved that at least the name was printed in the bigger type."

"She just charmed everybody," said Evelyn Lord, mayor of Beaumont at the time and a strong supporter of the symphony. Audiences, the musicians and the symphony board each voted on the five guest conductors. Lord said. "Diane won all three elections."

Wittry has been an overachiever all her life. She grew up in Pasadena, Calif., where her father, David Wittry, is a professor of material science and electrical engineering at the University of Southern California.

When she was 7 — the year she first started playing the violin - her family spent a year in England, where her mother, Elizabeth Wittry took up the Renaissance lute. When she was 15, the family spent half a year in Japan. While there she studied violin under Shinichi Suzuki, creator of the Suzuki method.

Always a top student, Wittry said she was "compulsive about getting A's in all my classes", and was valedictorian of her high school class before going on to USC.

"I never really thought about conducting until I had to take a required conducting class," she said, "It was a whole new world. I thought that this was something I really wanted to do."

From 1988 to 1991 she was conductor and musical director of the Miami Youth Symphony. Then, as now, she retained strong ties to California and has served since 1987 as director and conductor of educational programs for the Pasadena Symphony.

"I'm always on the lookout for guest-conducting spots," she said. Every year she conducts up to nine concerts with the Symphony of Southeast Texas, as well as four with the Lamar Chamber Orchestra. Last year, the educational and guest conducting jobs gave her a total of 25 major concerts. "I'm pulling back a little this year," she said, "I'm only scheduled for 17."

She has introduced several innovative programs to encourage students to appreciate symphonic music. There's an after school string program for students, as well as a program in which each elementary school in Beaumont adopts one of the symphony musicians. "They'll come to the concert and see their musician up on the stage and say, 'Hey, there's Carl, I know him!"

She conducts side-by-side concerts that let junior high and high school musicians sit beside their professional counterparts during concerts. Youth concerts involve a lot of props, she said, including a 16-foot length of rope to illustrate how much tubing is wound into a French horn.

A popular educational program for adults is "rendezvous with the maestra," a dinner a few nights before each concert at which she discusses the pieces the symphony will play.

Lord said Wittry is a popular luncheon and after-dinner speaker and a frequent guest at meetings with prospective investors locals are trying to lure to the area. "Prospective investors always want to know about quality of life," Lord said, "and a symphony orchestra is a valuable asset."

Wittry admits that she enjoys the lunch and dinner meetings for another reason as well. "I'm a terrible cook." she said. She said she recently looked inside her little-used oven to find the charred remains of two foil-wrapped potatoes. "I don't even remember when I put them in there." she said. "I just threw them away."

If Beaumont has a failing, she said, it's a dearth of good restaurants. She lives alone with a black cat named Martin in a part of near-downtown Beaumont called Old Town. "I came from California where nobody can afford to buy a house," she said, "I was excited to move to a place where I could buy a house."

In recent weeks, Wittry seems to be everywhere on the local scene — talking to local Rotary Clubs at noon luncheons, on local radio and television shows touting her symphony's newest season. Earlier this month she wrote a guest column in Newsweek magazine about the rarity of female orchestra conductors.

In the column she said maestras face problems maestros never experience.
A male conductor, for example, can wear a standard tuxedo to concerts, but females must keep finding new gowns. Her mother makes many of them, and Wittry's outfits often are the talk of Beaumont's fashion conscious.

Wittry is 5-foot-9 and slender. "When I am on the stage, it appears as though I have an incredibly small waist." she wrote. "I assure you it is really not that small, but perception is everything." The question she is asked most isn't about music, she wrote, but "What is the size of your tiny Scarlett O'Hara waist".